> I observe no denigration in his comment. These people made a choice. It's not even my personal opinion. I am merely describing the biases of the general pub

> I observe no denigration in his comment. These people made a choice. It's not even my personal opinion. I am merely describing the biases of the general public that result in the discrepancy in newsworthiness. It's not due to some coastal conspiracy against inland states. Florida is viewed by many as a backwards state, a popular target for mockery and derision, so a bias against inland states does not explain why hurricanes in Florida get more news coverage than floods in inland states. To reiterate myself a third time, the discrepancy arises from a perceived, not actual difference in culpability of the victims. People who are hit by hurricanes are thought to be the victims of bad chance, while the people living on floodplains are thought to be people who knowingly tempted fate. That this is not squared up with reality is of little consequence because newsworthiness is not some objective trait; newsworthiness is the product of the subjective biases and worldviews of the general public. I'll offer another reason for why the discrepancy exists, again relating to hurricanes being named. When a community gets hit by some hurricane, they're not hit by some generic hurricane but rather by a particular hurricane, that had a name and it's own news cycle leading up to contact with the coast. And throughout that news coverage, the location that the hurricane would come to shore at was up in the air. The weather forecasters were offering up stochastic predictions, but none knew for certain. The result of this is it feels like it was pure chance that the hurricane hit one community and not the other. Hurricanes are viewed as discrete independent events that could randomly hit your community, while the more rational point of view would be that at some point your coastal community is probably going to get hit by some hurricane. In floodplains the chance of a flood is considered as a flat probability per year, or century. The "hundred year flood" is a concept most people are familiar with, even if they misunderstand it[1]. People don't think of hurricanes like that, they don't consider a general hurricane threat. They consider the threat of each individual hurricane as it comes along. The "hundred year flood" concept is not considered for coastal regions, even though it's just as valid there. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EACkiMRT0pc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EACkiMRT0pc